~ The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies

Category Archives: Themes

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies is a refereed, peer-reviewed, and born-digital journal devoted to the culture, literature, history, and society of the medieval past. Published semi-annually, the journal collects exceptional examples of work by graduate students on a number of themes, disciplines, subjects, and periods of medieval studies. We also welcome book reviews of monographs published or re-released in the past five years that are of interest to medievalists. For the Fall issue we are particularly interested in reviews of books which fall under the current special topic.

Interiority refers to personal emotions, ideals, and beliefs in addition to self-reflection and inner consciousness. Recent scholarship in Cultural Studies asks how these elements of interiority may impact upon culture more broadly, and the extent to which culture impacts interiority. With alterity we refer not only to the state of being ‘other’ or different, but also to the study of how this difference is created. Within the framework of such study a mutual interrogation between center and periphery remains critical in order to prevent a reproduction of cycles of hegemony. In this context, the concepts of interiority and alterity both complement and contrast with each other: to echo Iain Chambers (himself echoing Heidegger), we refer to what unfolds towards us and away from us, to what both envelopes and exceeds us (“Signs of Silence, Lines of Listening”, The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons ed. I. Chambers and L. Curti, pp. 47-63 at p. 54).

For our Fall 2017 themed issue we invite proposals that critically engage with the concepts of interiority and alterity, both as separate concepts and in relation to each other. We hope to attract articles offering comparative and multidisciplinary perspectives, and welcome contributions from the fields of history, art history, literary scholarship, archeology, anthropology, or any other discipline that will contribute to our thinking about the application of these concepts and their broader theoretical contexts in the medieval period. We are particularly interested in submissions that take a more methodology-focused approach and those which engage with the materiality of interiority and alterity in the Middle Ages. Hortulus additionally suggests that contributors familiarize themselves with the current scholarship surrounding the use of the terms ‘Otherness’ and alterity.

Contributions should be in English and roughly 6,000–12,000 words, including all documentation and citational apparatus; book reviews are typically between 500-1,000 words but cannot exceed 2,000. All notes must be endnotes, and a bibliography must be included; submission guidelines can be found here. Contributions may be submitted to hortulus[at]hortulus-journal[dot]com and are due 25 September 2017. If you are interested in submitting a paper but feel you would need additional time, please send a query email and details about an expected time-scale for your submission. Queries about submissions or the journal more generally can also be sent to this address.